


And The Worms Ate Into His Brain

by flawedamythyst



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Cancer, Character Death, Gen, no happy ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-02-09
Updated: 2010-02-09
Packaged: 2018-10-16 08:19:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,776
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10567338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flawedamythyst/pseuds/flawedamythyst
Summary: After Dean's death, Sam starts seeing him everywhere.





	

The shop sold sports equipment. Sam wouldn't usually have given it a second glance as he passed, but there was a whole rack of surfboards just inside, and he had to wonder who bought a surfboard in the middle of Nebraska. A glance was all it took and he stopped dead in the street, staring.

Dean stared back, his head and shoulders clearly reflected in the window, even though Sam had buried him two weeks ago, shaking off Bobby's tactful suggestions that a cremation might be better.

Dean's eyes widened as if he could see Sam back. _Sammy?_ his mouth said, but no sound came out. Sam glanced around himself instinctively, but there was nothing to explain it.

 _Sam,_ said Dean again, looking desperate. His hands came up to press against the window, as if he was only separated from Sam by a thin layer of glass. _Help! Sam!_

Sam swallowed and stepped forward, and just like that, Dean was gone as if he'd never been there, nothing but surfboards and tennis racquets in the window.

 

 

The next time, Sam smelled him rather than saw him. He was lying in a motel room, starting on a bottle of whiskey, and suddenly he was overpowered by the unique mixture of leather, car wax, clothes worn slightly too long, gun oil, and the slightly sweet scent of too much hair gel. Sam sat up straight, alcohol sloshing onto the floor, suddenly so aware of his brother's presence that he could feel it in his throat.

The smell stayed all the way through the bottle, but was gone in the morning when Sam woke up fully clothed, his head aching as if an elephant had stepped on it. He choked back the burn in his throat and stumbled to the shower.

 

 

He was in a library, chasing down an obscure demonology book and wondering how and why they'd managed to get roses trained up the shelf edges, when he saw Dean properly. He was walking away from Sam down an aisle, with the swagger that Sam had caught him practising once when they were kids. Sam followed him as fast as he could, dropping his books on the floor and earning himself a glare from the librarian that he didn't even see. Dean was gone though, disappearing around the corner as completely as he'd disappeared from Sam's life.

Sam stared at the empty place where he should have been, swallowed down the bitter disappointment and shut his eyes briefly against the glare of the lights. Once was weird, twice was puzzling, three times was a pattern. He left the books where he'd dropped them and got in the Impala, driving with his foot heavy on the gas until he reached Bobby's.

 

 

“He's haunting me or something,” he said, rolling the cool bottle of beer that Bobby had given him over his aching forehead. “Or I'm seeing into Hell.”

Bobby was already shaking his head, frowning. “Nothing gets in or out of hell except demons, son. Not even images.”

Sam clenched his teeth. “It's something,” he insisted. There was a movement by his feet and he glanced down to see a large brown snake slither out from under his chair, slowly curling around the leg of Bobby's coffee table. He blinked. “Bit of a change from the dogs,” he said.

Bobby frowned. “What?” he asked.

Sam nodded down. “The snake. Let me guess, it's called Cheney.” There was a surge of pain in his head, stabbing through his temple, and he winced. Maybe he should cut back on the alcohol - being permanently hungover clearly wasn't doing him any favours.

Bobby stared at him. “Sam,” he said slowly. “There's no snake.”

Sam looked down again at the snake, which flicked out a thin tongue at him. “Bobby, it's right there,” he said.

Bobby shook his head slowly. “Maybe you should go to a hospital,” he said, sounding worried.

 

 

The doctor showed him an MRI scan of his brain. “This dark lump is the tumour,” he said, pointing to an area that took up far more of the image than Sam was happy with. “It's in the temporal lobe, which is why you're experiencing hallucinations.”

Sam nodded numbly as the pen holder on the desk scuttled across to hide behind the computer monitor. “How...what's the treatment?” he asked.

The doctor laid the scan down carefully and Sam could already guess what he was going to say. “We can't operate. We can try a course of radiation therapy, but I have to be frank with you, Mr Lucas. The size of the tumour indicates that it's extremely fast-growing, and the area of the brain that it's in...we're talking about a life expectancy of months, even with radiotherapy.”

Sam ducked his head and swallowed. _I hope I go to Hell, so I'm with Dean,_ he thought irrationally. When he looked up, his father was standing behind the doctor, one hand resting on his shoulder.

“I'm sorry,” offered the doctor, and Sam nodded, both to him and to Dad. Dad nodded back, then turned and walked into the picture on the wall, shrinking down to fit in amongst the jungle flowers.

 

 

The nurses were kind and friendly, but Sam couldn't help wondering when the monsters that followed them around the ward would strike. There was a blonde-haired one in particular, who always helped him when he forgot how to tie his shoes, or what his fork was for, who had a poltergeist trailing her.

He tried to give her his salt stash. “Throw it in his face,” he told her. She just smiled kindly and put it back on his side table.

“They're not real,” Bobby reminded him, and Sam nodded, distracted by the sound of church bells tolling from the direction of the children's ward.

 

 

“Sammy,” hissed a voice, waking Sam up. He blinked, trying to orientate himself. It was dark, and the night nurse was sitting at her station with a harpy next to her, picking at its teeth and grinning at Sam.

Dean was crouched next to his bed. “Sammy,” he said again, “wake up.”

Sam looked at him. He didn't have blood streaked down his face, or his wounds still open from the hellhounds' claws, so he counted it one of his better hallucinations.

“I got out,” he said. “I don't even know how – I just woke up in my grave.”

And he was talking. They hadn't made noise before. Sam wondered if that meant he was getting worse.

“I have to sleep,” he said.

Dean frowned. “The hell, dude? Your brother comes back from Hell and that's all you can say?”

Sam sighed and shut his eyes. “Nothing gets in and out of hell except demons,” he said, remembering Bobby's words. Speaking was wearing him out, spiking the pain in his head beyond the level that he could sleep at.

“I'm not a demon,” said Dean fervently. “I don't know what happened.”

Sam wasn't listening any more. He hit the button for the nurse so he could ask for more pain relief, and when she stood up to come over, Dean swore under his breath and hurried away. Sam didn't watch him go – he'd be back. He always was.

 

 

The ceiling was covered in flies. Sam watched them crawl over each other, too exhausted and pain-filled to manage more. He'd had another seizure that morning and now his left arm wouldn't move. The doctors had looked grave, stroking their waist-length beards and ducking their heads together.

“Sam,” said a voice, and Sam pulled his eyes away to see two men by his bed, one in a leather jacket and one in a trucker's cap. They looked sad and he wondered who they were here to see, and how close they were to death.

“Sam,” said the one in the leather jacket. Shadows were moving across his face like clouds in front of the moon. “Hey, it's us.”

“It's really us,” added Trucker Hat. “Dean's really back.”

Sam felt himself frown. “Who's Dean?” he asked and his voice sounded wrong somehow, echoing across the ward.

The two men stared at him and someone started drilling in the corridor, loud and insistent.

“I'm Dean,” said the one in a leather jacket, sounding outraged, but Sam could barely hear him. The drilling felt like it was in his head now, boring down through his brain.

“Tell them to stop,” he said. “It hurts.”

“Sam...” said Dean, reaching out a hand to him. He touched Sam's left arm though, and Sam couldn't feel it.

“Doesn't work any more,” he told him. The drilling kicked up a notch, and the flies all took off at once, roaring down the ward in a big cloud.

“God damn it,” swore Dean, but Sam didn't think it was aimed at him. Maybe it was aimed at the flies.

 

 

Sam couldn't remember not being in pain. It just got worse and worse despite the drugs that the nurses kept giving him. He couldn't sleep any more, he just lay half-awake, throbbing pain driving out all thought.

There was a dark shadow by his bed, but Sam couldn't remember how long it had been there or even tell if it was really there at all. The pain burnt deeper into his mind and he wondered when his next lot of morphine was. He heard himself make a noise, a tiny pathetic thing that shivered off to hide in the corner, and the shadow moved, came closer and resolved itself into a man. He fell to his knees by the bed, and Sam wondered desperately if he had any morphine.

“I tried,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Tried everything, Sammy, I'm so sorry.”

That didn't sound hopeful. Sam let out a sigh and the man clutched at his hand. His right hand, so Sam could feel it, warm and holding on slightly too hard.

“I offered everything, but he wouldn't go for it. Said they didn't want a soul they'd already broken. I'm so sorry, Sammy.”

Sam didn't really have any idea what that meant, but the grip on his hand was something to focus on that wasn't pain, something solid and tangible. He looked at the man for a long moment, wishing he knew why he looked familiar, and squeezed his hand back weakly. The man let out a strange, half-gulping noise and ducked his head, hiding his face.

Sam shut his eyes, concentrated on the warmth of the man's hand, and rode out the next wave of pain. Darkness pulled at the edges of his mind, and he gratefully collapsed into it, leaving the pain behind.

 


End file.
